With Pen in Hand: An Invitation to Slow Down and Write Your Way Back to Truth
There’s something magical that happens with pen in hand to paper that just doesn’t occur when fingers meet keyboard. I discovered this again recently while sorting through some old boxes, when I found a stack of letters my grandmother had written to me years ago. Her handwriting – that careful script she’d learned in school decades before I was born – carried something her emails never could. Love, maybe. Time, certainly. But more than that: the unmistakable mark of a real human being, impossible to fake or replicate.
In a world where I can no longer trust that the voice on the phone is really my neighbor, where videos of people saying things they never said flood our screens daily, that handwritten letter feels like an anchor to what’s real.
That’s what “With Pen in Hand” is about.
When Truth Itself Becomes Uncertain
We’re living through something unprecedented. For the first time in human history, we can’t trust our eyes and ears. The technology that was supposed to connect us and inform us has become so sophisticated that it can perfectly mimic human voices, faces, even handwriting. Every week, I hear stories of grandmothers receiving calls from voices that sound exactly like their grandchildren, begging for money. Every day, fake videos spread faster than truth.
But when someone sits down with pen and paper, takes the time to form each letter by hand, there’s something irreplaceably human about that act. Not because handwriting can’t be forged – it certainly can – but because the very act of choosing to write by hand in 2025 is itself a statement. It says: I’m slowing down. I’m being intentional. I’m choosing the harder way because some things are worth doing slowly.
Why Your Hand Matters More Than Ever
Scientists tell us that handwriting activates different parts of our brain than typing does. When we write by hand, we’re forced to slow down, to be more deliberate with our words. We can’t delete and retype as easily, so we think more carefully about what we want to say. We feel the weight of the pen, the texture of the paper, the slight ache in our hand that reminds us we’re doing something physical, something real.
But this isn’t really about neuroscience. It’s about resistance. It’s about choosing human pace in a machine-speed world. It’s about creating something that algorithms can’t instantly generate, manipulate, or replicate perfectly.
When my friend Sarah sends me a handwritten note, I know it came from her hands, her thoughts, her time. In an age where I can’t be sure if the email in my inbox was written by a person or a program, that certainty feels precious.
What We’ve Lost and What We Can Find Again
I think about my great-aunt who kept journals for sixty years – not for anyone else to read, just for herself. Three pages every morning, stream of consciousness, working through her thoughts at the pace of handwriting. When she passed away, her children found boxes of these journals, a record not just of events but of a mind thinking, processing, discovering its own wisdom.
She lived in an era when information moved slowly, when you had time to think before you responded, when wisdom was cultivated through reflection rather than reaction. We’ve traded that kind of deep thinking for instant opinions, that careful consideration for algorithmic feeds designed to keep us scrolling.
And somewhere in that trade, we’ve lost not just the ability to think slowly, but the ability to trust our own thoughts. When information comes at us faster than we can process it, when we can’t tell what’s real from what’s fabricated, when our own voices get drowned out by the digital noise, we start to lose touch with our own inner wisdom.
An Invitation to Anchor Yourself
“With Pen in Hand” isn’t about nostalgia or rejecting useful technology. It’s about creating islands of authenticity in an ocean of uncertainty. It’s about practicing the ancient art of thinking at human speed in a world designed for machine efficiency.
Maybe it’s writing a letter to someone you care about instead of sending a text – creating something they’ll know came from your hand, your heart, your real time. Maybe it’s keeping a journal where you work through your thoughts without the pressure of likes or shares, where you can discover what you actually think beneath the noise of what everyone else is thinking.
Maybe it’s copying down wisdom that speaks to you – quotes from books, prayers that comfort you, thoughts that deserve to be held in your own handwriting. There’s something about forming those words with your own hand that makes them yours in a way that copying and pasting never could.
What You’ll Find Here
In this space, I’ll share what I’m learning about the art of handwritten life as an antidote to digital overwhelm. Sometimes it’ll be practical – how to create handwritten rituals that ground you, ways to use pen and paper to think more clearly, simple practices that help you distinguish between what’s true and what just feels urgent.
Sometimes it’ll be more personal – reflections on what I’ve discovered in my own handwritten pages, stories about how slowing down to human pace has helped me navigate a world moving too fast for wisdom, thoughts on why choosing the harder way sometimes leads to the deeper truth.
And sometimes, I’ll share wisdom worth copying by hand – words from people who lived at a pace that allowed for real thinking, letters from an era when correspondence was an art form, reminders of what we’re capable of when we give ourselves time to really know what we think.
Your Invitation Back to Yourself
So here’s my invitation to you: Find a pen you like the feel of. Find paper that makes you want to fill it with truth. And start somewhere small. Write your thoughts instead of immediately sharing them. Copy down something beautiful instead of just screenshotting it. Write a letter that only you and the recipient will ever see.
Notice how it feels different. Notice how you think differently when you slow down to the speed of handwriting. Notice how much clearer your own voice becomes when you’re not competing with the algorithmic chaos.
Because in a world that’s forgetting how to be still, how to think deeply, how to tell truth from fiction, putting pen to paper isn’t just writing – it’s an act of quiet rebellion. It’s choosing depth over speed, wisdom over information, human pace over machine efficiency. It’s anchoring yourself to something real when everything else feels uncertain.
Welcome to “With Pen in Hand.” Let’s slow down and find our way back to truth together.
